Emerging Hackerspaces – Peer-Production Generation

This paper describes a peer-production movement, the hackerspace movement, its members and values. The emergence of hackerspaces, fablabs and makerspaces is changing how hacker communities and other like-minded communities function. Thus, an understanding of the nature of hackerspaces helps in detailing the features of contemporary peer-production. Building on previous work on 'fabbing', two different sets of results are presented: (1) empirical observations from a longitudinal study of hackerspace participants; and (2) a theoretical description of hacker generations as a larger context in which peer-production can be located. With regard to (1), research data has been collected through prolonged observation of hackerspace communities and two surveys.